Sunday, July 31, 2011

The usual suspects sit atop the international box office: the Boy Wizard, Cap'n America, and the Giant Robots. As for animation, it looks like this:

... Fourth on the weekend was Pixar’s Cars 2, which bagged $30 million from 39 offshore territories representing about 88% of the 3D animation’s foreign run potential, as per distributor Disney. Overseas b.o. cume stands at $217.6 million accumulated over six rounds. ...

Cars 2 now has a global total of $399.7 million.

... DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 2 came in with $4.5 million on the weekend collected from 3,304 venues in 59 territories. Foreign cume for the Paramount release totals $447.5 million ...

The pudgy bear has a worldwide cume of $609.2 million, a sadness for Jeffrey but quite handsome for most studio moguls.

Then there are the small, blue people:

... The Smurfs ... opened offshore at 836 venues in seven markets for a weekend tally of $4.4 million -- thanks to a No. 1 Spain debut drawing an estimated $3.96 million from 634 locations. Openings in France, Germany, Belgium, Mexico and Brazil are on tap this week. ...

Yep, unfortunately despite having cost a lot less than Kung Fu Panda , the other pudgy bear movie has these theatrical box-office numbers:

Domestic: $22,409,000 + Foreign: $6,460,000 = Worldwide: $28,869,000

Probably will be double (or more) those numbers when Pooh comes out on DVD/BluRay, but it does make one wonder if the previous strip-mining of the Pooh property by Disney Corp. has permanently associated Pooh with "direct-to-video pre-schooler fodder" in the mind of most consumers. I believe Disney wanted to restore some "class" to the franchise with this recent theatrical release , but I think the damage is done. The fact is that no one was clamoring for another Pooh feature , and this recent one wasn't really any better (and maybe not quite as good) as other recent Pooh theatrical releases such as "The Tigger Movie" ($96,159,800 cumulative worldwide b.o. against a budget of $30 million), and "Pooh's Heffalump Movie" ($52,858,433 cumulative worldwide b.o. against a budget of $20 million) . Anyone really think the new Pooh movie will get anywhere close to $50 million worldwide theatrical b.o. gross ? Sadly I doubt it.

It was capably animated , but the often touted Story, Story, Story™ just wasn't there. There was no reason not to just wait for the video release. Most consumers (parents) probably thought: why pay movie theater prices for a retread of what we've seen before ? How could Disney marketing not have understood this?

Of course the Corporate higher-ups perhaps never intended to make the money back at the theatrical box-office and the theatrical release of "Winnie the Pooh" was just throwing a bone to Lasseter and the 2D feature animation people so they feel like they have not been "reduced" to working on direct-to-video features.

Disney frankly disgusts me. It says it wants to revive 2D, but then uses the tech to just repeat itself (princess movie, Pooh movie). It needs to do something BOLD with the medium - create another Lilo and Stitch, or animate the Snow Queen movie in lush, Fantasia-level 2D. Will it do it? Hell no. The bean-counters run Disney now. They're not going to spend money on a really ambitious 2D film when it can spend it on buying the Incredible Hulk. Disney has no artistic or innovative soul. I weep for Walt's legacy.